Moto X: Designed by You

The 1st of August wasn’t just important because of the fact that it was the first day of the month, but because Motorola announced its new flagship phone, christened “Moto X” at their press event in New York. Ever since Google purchased Motorola in May 2012 for $12.5 billion, Motorola has released several smartphones but, Google never really had a hand in developing a smartphone from scratch, until now.

Moto X Angles

The Moto X sports a 4.7-inch AMOLED Display with a screen resolution of 1280×720. Yes, it is 720p HD, we get that. It has 316 PPI which shouldn’t be noticeably worse compared to 1080p panels out there. The phone uses a Super AMOLED display which hasn’t proved to be very popular but Motorola had a good reason for it, Active Display, which I’ll talk about. The processor powering the Moto X is a Motorola custom-made X8 chip that the smartphone maker has used in the Droid Maxx, Ultra and Mini. Inside the core of the X8 chip, lies a dual core 1.7 Ghz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with Adreno 320 graphics and 2 gigs of RAM, and separate processors for the “Google Now” voice recognition software, that I’ll elucidate later, and contextual computing each. The phone ships with Android version 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, which is a bit disappointing with the 4.3 version already released and their collaboration with Google should’ve ensured 4.3 at launch. The Moto X has non-removable 2200 mAh battery, with which Motorola promises a battery life of 24 hours. There’s a 10-megapixel rear camera with Motorola’s “Clear Pixel” technology that results in 75% more light capture, Motorola claims. The rear camera can record 1080p Full HD video at 30 fps and its front facing 2 megapixel companion can record 1080p HD video as well. Weighing at 130 grams, its pretty light, sharing the same weight with that of the Samsung Galaxy S4, though a little heavier than the iPhone 5’s 112 gram build. The phone’s quite a bit thicker than most at 10.4mm at the thickest and 5.6mm at the thinnest on it’s curved back.

Moto Xs Colors

Motorola is really looking forward to strike gold with one feature that I haven’t mentioned till now – Customization. You can choose everything from the color of the power button, color of the build to an engraved message on the back cover. There are several color options to choose from, for each intricate element and you are given the liberty to set a Power On message that is displayed when the phone boots up, color of the charger or the included Sol Republic JAX in-ear headphones, or even wallpapers. All these combinations of options can be selected using the Moto Maker option on the website, and Moto Maker Customizations are completely free, let alone the onboard storage options. Phones are assembled as per the customer’s specifications in Fort Worth, Texas and shipped for free within 4 days, as claimed by Motorola. There is no room for expandable memory via microSD, so users have to choose from the 16GB and 32 GB variants, paying $199 and $250for the device respectively (Customers get a complementary 50 GB of Google Drive storage for 2 years, other than the standard of 15 GB, equivalent to a total 65GB of cloud storage) . This astonishing extent of customization hasn’t been achieved to date, and that’s where Motorola distinguishes itself from its competitors in the smartphone market. There’s a 14-day (30 in California) return policy, in case you find yourself better off with another color choice. You can purchase the black and white models that are available, or get the redemption card for the X in-store as well, and customize it online according to your preferences, with the help of the PIN code on that card and then ship it directly to you. Motorola is also working on wooden back cover for the X, hoping to achieve the first wooden smartphone. This all results in 504 potential versions of the Moto X.

So a quick brushup. You can customize your Moto X with 16 different colors, 7 trim colors, engravings, wallpaper, and more all from a simple to use website, and Motorola will ship the newly built custom design direct to you in 4 days. All completely free with a no questions asked 14-day return policy.

Moto X Touchless Control

I think I’ve introduced Google Now to you earlier, but nonetheless, it’s like Siri for Android with powerful predictive capabilities. Though the best part is that you don’t need to hold any button to activate it. Just speak “OK, Google Now” and it’ll fire up right away; the X is constantly eavesdropping to hear those magic words, but it’s all local so don’t fret about your conversation being recorded. What sets it apart from Siri, S Voice and other leading voice activated personal assistants is that it’ll remember your voice and how you sound like; it’ll listen only and only to you, disregarding others’ futile attempts in activating it. So, it can answer your queries, book appointment meetings in your calendar, place calls, songs of your choice, so on and on. All this is possible with minimalistic battery consumption thanks to the separate core assigned specifically for Google Now voice recognition. We’ll come to know more of its capabilities once we have it in our hands.

Moto X Active DisplayAnother feature of the X is something called Active Display. Even when the phone is locked and kept away, it will display the time and notifications of new messages or missed calls. No, I’m not done yet. The phone fully exploits the AMOLED display and uses only certain pixels in displaying this information, and the entire screen isn’t lit up. So kiss goodbye to those days when you would have to press a button to activate the screen and then check the time or see if you have any impending notifications. To open up the notification and go to the concerned app, simply slide the notification icon. And the X is smart enough to not use Active Display when the phone is face down or kept in your pocket or purse or whatever. It senses your motion of picking up the phone with its gyroscopes and, then only activates Active Display (pun intended). We can hence see what strives Motorola has taken to make the X consume minimal battery and making it run longer. The notifications will pulse whenever you pick up the phone or there’s an option to have it pulse every 15 seconds.

Motorola has also added a catchy way of starting the Camera application of the X quickly called Quick Capture. When locked, the X has to be flicked twice, as if turning a door knob. Thus, it’s easier and fun as well to open the camera application in 2 seconds or so. To click a photo, simply tap anywhere on the screen. Holding anywhere on the screen will make the X take a series of rapid shots. There isn’t any dedicated camera shutter however, for old fashioned shutterbugs. To adjust any camera settings, you have to swipe left from the Camera app. To see what snaps you’ve taken in the photo gallery, simply swipe to the right. So, we can see that Motorola has taken efforts in making the Camera app as clean as possible and also display to users of what they’re actually going to snap, with a much more cleaner interface. We will have to see if the Clear Pixel camera is good or just another gimmick.

Moto X End

Well, you can get the handset on all the major US carriers like Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile starting from the 16GB model priced at $199, or the 32GB model at $250.However, the levels of customization that I’ve described above using Moto Maker are available only on AT&T for a limited period of time at launch. The phone will be coming to the Play Store unlocked as the Google Play Edition phone with stock Android, and expect that to be around $600+. The Moto X is a refreshing new perspective of a consumer smartphone and it looks promising especially with the $500 million in advertising that Google is putting behind it.